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    Forward: A Memoir
    Forward: A Memoir
    Forward: A Memoir
    Audiobook5 hours

    Forward: A Memoir

    Written by Abby Wambach

    Narrated by Abby Wambach

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    About this audiobook

    ""Lucid and wrenching...Forward puts [Wambach's] achievement in context with painful and beautiful candor."" —NPR

    ""Forward is the powerful story of an athlete who has inspired girls all over the world to believe in themselves.""  —Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, New York Times Bestselling author of Lean In 

    “This is the best memoir I’ve read by an athlete since Andre Agassi’s Open.”  —Adam Grant, Wharton professor and New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take

    Abby Wambach has always pushed the limits of what is possible.  Named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people of 2015, the iconic soccer player captured the nation’s heart when she led her team to its recent World Cup Championship.  Admired for her fearlessness and passion, Abby is a vocal advocate for women’s rights and equal opportunity, pushing to translate the success of her team to the real world. She has become a heavily requested speaker to a wide a range of audiences, from college students to executives at Fortune 500 companies.

    In Forward, Abby recounts her own decisions, wins, losses, and the pivotal moments that helped her become the world class athlete and leader she is today. Wambach’s book goes beyond the soccer field to reveal a soulful person grappling universal questions about how we can live our best lives, and become our truest selves. Written with honesty and heart, Forward is an inspiring blueprint for individual growth and a rousing call to action.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateSep 13, 2016
    ISBN9780062561855
    Author

    Abby Wambach

    Abby Wambach is an American soccer player, coach, two-time Olympic gold medalist, FIFA Women’s World Cup Champion, and the 2012 FIFA World Player of the Year. A six-time winner of the U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year award, Wambach has been a regular on the U.S. women’s national soccer team since 2003, earning her first cap in 2001. She is the highest all-time scorer for the national team and holds the world record for international goals for both female and male soccer players, with 184 goals. Karen Abbott is the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City, American Rose, and, most recently, Liar Temptress Soldier Spy, named one of the best books of 2014 by Library Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Amazon, and Flavorwire, and optioned by Sony for a miniseries. A native of Philadelphia, she now lives in New York City, where she's at work on her next book. 

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    Reviews for Forward

    4/5

    118 ratings9 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The year 2015 marked the end of an era in U.S. women's soccer when soccer great, Abby Wambach retired.  Here are a few fast facts about Wambach: 1) Two-time Olympic gold medalist, 2) FIFA World Cup Champion, 3) Highest all-time international goal scorer for male and female soccer players.

      FORWARD is less about Abby the soccer warrior and more about shattering stereotypes and her raw, emotional and turbulent journey - the side most people don't know about.  Wambach is brazen and audacious; from publicly kissing her wife at the FIFA Women's World Cup Final nine days after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage to her candor around pay inequality in sports.  She's made her share of mistakes and she confronts them head-on which is both painful and moving.  This story is full of insight and inspiration and every girl who plays sports should know Abby's story. 

      If I had to put a label on Wambach it would be R E B E L.

      Abby's Best Quotes:

      "I have never been ashamed of my sexuality.  Ever.  I am not going to scream it from the rooftops, but I sure want to share that moment with my better half."
      “At a young age I learned that you own labels by defying them, and defy them by owning them. I know that the final word on me will be one that I choose.”

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed hearing Abby’s story. She reads the audiobook herself and does it well. Recommend.
    • 5/5
      This isn’t just about soccer.

      It’s strength, failure, recreating, growth.

      Abby is incredible to listen to as she is candid in sharing her highs and lows.
    • 5/5
      Really interesting book! I would recommend it, specially for athletes
    • 4/5
      There is so much more....so much depth....I was not expecting such an honest and straightforward memoir. It does center on soccer but takes it much deeper, into her life, her feelings and her climb to sobriety and staying healthy. inspiring and we'll done. an unexpected pleasure
    • 2/5
      Unfortunately I didn't find this very well written. It's tone was conversational, with poor grammar.
    • 4/5
      I love soccer – I’ve been playing it on and off for 30 years – and I especially love women’s soccer. I went to five World Cup matches up in Vancouver Canada last year, including the final, where the USWNT beat Japan 5-2. I have season tickets to the National Women’s Soccer League Seattle Reign (who still have a chance to make the playoffs this year!), and attended the USWNT victory tour match in Seattle last fall. When I learned Ms. Wambach was going to write a book about her life, I knew it was going to be a must read.

      Ms. Wambach and I are the same age, but other than both playing soccer and being white women, we don’t have much else in common. She has an intensity that I can’t even begin to imagine, which makes sense – it seems fairly necessary to become elite in any field, especially one as demanding as athletics. For most of her life, she seems to have taken the concept of ‘work hard, play hard’ to the extremes, mainly through either strict adherence to training while in the middle of camps, or through serious ingestion of alcohol and pills. She remains the record holder (male or female) of most international goals, but she is also known for the DUI she received in Portland just a few months after retirement.

      There is a brutality to this book that should make it a challenging read, but instead I devoured it. The fuel to turn the pages wasn’t so much born out of a desire to see what next ridiculous high or painful low was going to follow; instead I was genuinely interested in how Ms. Wambach was going to both explain and handle her life experiences. Would she be full of excuses? Philosophical? Would she only barely mention the more challenging parts of her story?

      No, she was just honest. She sometimes looks like the hero (as she should), and sometimes she is epically fucking up. She is ultimately human, and I feel like we could only get this story from someone who is no longer in the field, especially if the story is coming from a woman. As we’ve seen lately, with Hope Solo being fired for calling the Swedish team ‘cowards’ (something Cristiano Ronaldo essentially did regarding Iceland to zero consequence), women get a whole lot of negative attention when they don’t fit into the mold we’ve created to represent what it means to be a woman in the public eye.

      I don’t think you need to be a soccer fan to enjoy this read, so if you are curious at all, I recommend it.
    • 3/5
      Hard to put down. The book is fast-paced...I think that reflects the way Wamback lives her life. I think Wambach has fought some inner demons, and is still fighting others.
    • 4/5
      Abby Wambach has long been one of my favorite soccer players. Her memoir, Forward, is a rather slight book but provides lots of detail about her history in sports, her coming out as a lesbian, and her struggles with discipline. She's quite frank about her problems with alcohol and pills and the problems that they caused her. Apparently she managed to switch back and forth between a very focused in-season persona and a very relaxed one, but is still working to find an identity that has the necessary restraint without overwhelming tension. A very public DUI arrest gave her the wake-up call that she needed to accept the need for serious change. She is turning the strong focus that she gave athletics to being a spokesperson for various causes, especially the empowerment of young women. For fans, it's an interesting look at how one star athlete dealt with her demons and also with the challenge of doing meaningful things after retiring.